Dickens

listen to the song here: https://soundcloud.com/joel-crow/04-dickens



All that I ask is that your heart be softened as you walk in the sunlight, remembering me.
Many will speak of the sins I've committed.
I don't ask you to doubt, but I beg for mercy on my memory.




I've only ever played this song once publicly in this recorded version. I always talk myself up to playing these kind of songs but then when it comes time I back down because I think nobody will care to hear something like this at a coffee shop. I feel like most people just don't care for more depressing contemplative music, which describes many of the songs I've written. But I hope there is some kindred spirit out there who will appreciate this very short song based on a much more eloquent passage out of the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens:
"For the very breath of beans and clover whispered to me that the day must come when it would be well for my memory that others walking in sunlight be softened as they thought of me."

Though I'm only a self-educated student of Dickens' work, I think I'm right in saying that Great Expectations is the most auto-biographical novel he ever wrote. Around the time he wrote it he was making what may have been the single greatest mistake of his lifetime, leaving his wife for another woman. Had he been a mere commoner again, as he was born, the separation from his wife would have been considered scandalous. But as it was, he was by now a hugely successful author, and men of his social standing could have certain indiscretions with impunity. But I believe that he knew it was all wrong, and I believe that in this one line he was speaking more for himself than he was for Pip.
There's been a novel and a movie made based on this scandal, and while I believe the truth should be told, I fully believe that they will portray Dickens as a far less honorable man than he really was. And while I know that I never will come to fame as he did, I feel this same yearning, I believe we all do. So let us do unto others as we would have posterity do unto us, and be softened as we walk in the sunlight remembering the good men and good women who lived, as we all do, in dire need of the Grace of Jesus Christ to cover our sins.

Buried

listen to the song here: https://soundcloud.com/joel-crow/buried


I will not fall, like over-ripe fruit, into your hands.
If one of us stalls, it does not then mean the other will stand,
so pound your shoe, you little boy!
Will envy and hate divide our state, the haves and have-nots?
Will there be revolt like a thunderbolt? Or slow drop-by-drop, dividing our Republic here?
Will all democracy disappear?

Khrushchev, Khrushchev, so confidently you said you knew.
Oh, Khrushchev, Khrushchev. Your prophecy came but only half-true.
Do you want the full truth?

We will be buried, we all will be buried in dust.
We'll be forgotten, we all will become what we must.
And our finest freedom fighters will go the way of all men,
but Freedom, Freedom will live again!

So you sing with the voice of the people, the complete collective agrees
to downsize the successful to keep the feeble on their knees!
So you ostracize! You cut down to size! A perfect-people machine!
A distressing dystopian scene!
But you are the voice of the people? Well, the future sounds different to me.

Khrushchev, Khrushchev, all of your cities, and all of ours, will be rubble.
Khrushchev. And all of your sons, and all of ours, will soon wield the shovel.
And we will be buried in dust, because we must.
And our finest freedom fighters will go the way of all men.
But freedom, precious freedom. Freedom will live again!







I wrote this song, it must have been almost a year ago now, and all that time William and I have been attempting to reconcile the very different sounds of piano and electric guitar into an audible track. It's been slow-going, as we've both been very busy. But if we receive enough positive feedback, I'm sure we'll be able to turn out more songs very quickly to complete this project. I've already written several songs for the purpose, hopefully some of them will be usable. We're already planning to use the song Legalized Infanticide, a song I wrote several years ago, as it has a similar heavy sound. You can read about that song here: http://crowlyricjournal.blogspot.com/2013/04/legalized-infanticide.html
And you can listen to it here: (link coming soon)

This song includes many references, some rather obscure, so I'll do my best to briefly explain. It's largely centered around the threats and assurances of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, during a private meeting, that slowly but surely Communism would overtake Capitalism. That with slow doses of Socialist policies we would become just like the Soviet Union. "You will fall, like overripe fruit into our hands." he said. The much more famous line he shouted during a public meeting is the one that the chorus of this song is drawn from, "We will bury you!" It's the same idea, Khrushchev persistently believes and proclaims that Communism will bury Capitalism, that freedom of the individual will be buried for the sake of the collective.
This song is my answer to that claim, and many still today claim it. Many are convinced that our country is traveling along a teleological road, where the future will always be more righteous than the past, hence such phrases like "the wrong side of history." Of course the unspoken assumption in that phrase is that future historians will definitely have a stronger moral code than we do today, but history itself shares a different perspective. Some of these revolutionaries, who are convinced that we can form a society based on Communism that, unlike ever other Communist society that's ever existed, will not end with the deaths of many innocents, some of these revolutionaries believe it will come like a thunderbolt, a violent coup of our government. Others, like Khrushchev, and like our current president, believe it will be a slow drop-by-drop. The government begins with socialized medicine, and from there stems our complete dependence on their plans for us. The current situation looks very bleak for freedom indeed.
However, I do not believe that Communism will bury Capitalism. I believe that they both will be buried. We all will be buried in dust, in time. And no matter how tyrannical the government becomes, Freedom will always live in the hearts of men. Those of us who value Freedom will fight for it, and we will all die and be buried, but Freedom will always live again. If Communism does overtake this country, it will not be the Communism Khrushchev had in mind. Or if Capitalism reemerges in all its former glory, it also will be a new brand of Capitalism. Perhaps not something better or worse, but certainly something different. Never will we construct a system on this earth so perfect that it will not spoil with time, wood rots and gold corrodes, but in time they both will be long gone.
When this country has become a mere shadow of its former magnificence, perhaps no other country will ever again rise to the same level, where the Freedom of our hearts is enshrined in law so that the leaders' hands will be tied from building barricades against the fulfillment of dreams and opportunities of the common citizens (the leaders' motives may be nefarious, or may be for the common good, but it comes to the same result). Maybe no other country will praise Freedom again, as we have done, and if that's the case, then the loss is great indeed. But whatever the future holds, we should throw our fists into the air together and be empowered by the knowledge that in our children's hearts, and in our grandchildren's hearts, Freedom will live again.

The World is Wide

http://youtu.be/KtapRafZANs


The world is wide, the fields shine white like a bride in the warm sun.
My feet stride with joy like the adventurous young boy... that I never was...
so much life to make up for days I've spent in books, so here we go.

The world is wide, the grass is alive with the wind from the river where you bathe your feet.
The birds sing a song, melodious and long, just to talk, just to comment on the heat.
I sometimes wish that we could be that way, singing just to communicate.
I think I know what I'd say.
I'd say

"Home, home! Someday we'll be home! We're going home!
Home, home! Someday we'll see home! We're going home!
And you were not made for this."

The world is wide, but far too narrow to be mine, where I'm trapped inside this skin.
I become what I detest, and I can't save myself from this ruin within.
So I long to be free... I long to be home-free.
I long to be home.

And you were not made for this. It's why you feel so restless.
No, you were not made for this. You were made for home.

Someday, you'll see, we're going home.











There are two main points to this song, that the world is beautiful and that the world is unfulfilling. But even less fulfilling is the fantasy where I've always lived. Growing up I guess I used to think that it's only in books that the hills really roll green with grass and the mountains stand crisp with snow and fog settles into the crevices, only in books that strangers say kind things and offer companionship. Tolkien loved those marvelous landscapes, so he created a world full of them, and I desired to live there not knowing that all those things were really a shadow of what this world has to offer, and I neglected to notice the beautiful things that I was already surrounded with. My mom's garden, it might well be a Hobbiton garden. And when I began to take myself for walks along the side of the Columbia River, I noticed that some houses looked positively Hobbit-like. But it wasn't until I read a book called "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" that I began to truly realize that all those beautiful things Tolkien wrote about really exist in full on this earth. Ironic, that a book would show me how to look outside.

The band Switchfoot wrote a song called "This is Home" for the Prince Caspian movie. So at least I'm not the only one that views these far-off shores as the true reality. Jon Foreman must have been captivated by Narnia just as I was by Middle-Earth. The song is also a thinly-veiled praise of our ultimate destination, (the word heaven doesn't do it justice, I will call it Zion), and obviously this song also carries that theme. The images I wrote of are definitely from the Columbia River, as I walked through Leslie Groves Park to Howard Amon. Most people don't like the wind, as it gets very strong in the Tri-Cities, but I've always loved it. It's another one of those things, I guess that connect me to Tolkien's world.

So why do I feel such a longing to see another world? Even if I made the most of the world I'm in, I know I would long for the unfelt breezes around the broken watchtower at Weathertop, and the howls of the wolves in the distance? The sparkling Grey Havens, the forest of Ithilien, the strange Withywindle. Why do I feel so restless? Why has this world, in all its glory, left me unfulfilled?
And even if I cut away all my anchors and lived to the fullest, going broke for the sake of adventure, I somehow know that it would never give me the kind of permanent satisfaction I'm after, the kind that only an unreachable world has to offer. It's only because I was not made for this.
And if you, too, feel restless, know that you were not made for this. We will reach the other side and find it to be more spectacular than any book could speak of. Perhaps the only one to come close is at the end of C.S. Lewis', The Final Battle. He says that the colors became more vivid, everything become more real, and the Pevensies were finally home.

The Plight

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joel-Crow/105195016743?id=105195016743&sk=app_2405167945


All my world held in suspense.
Time breaks, nothing makes sense.
When I turn my back on You
do You hurt like this too?

Do You weep for me like Lazarus
when death takes me to the tomb?
Have we cast stones while You were writing in the dust?
Why does the bride despise the Groom?

You're the home I cannot find.
I'm the blind leading the blind.
Please, rescue these souls from me,
and if You will... please come rescue me.

Let me just hear Your voice, and know it
like a child, like a sheep.
All of the beauty in the sky, and in the earth below it
speaks, it speaks to me.

Speak, speak to me.
Lord, come and rescue me.



This is one of very few songs I've written that speaks of God and religion in a forthright way, though many other songs speak of a similar struggle less blatantly.
The melody to this song was written, I believe, while I was still in high-school, or maybe in the year after I graduated. I remember it was an early morning, and I was tired, and I sat down at my first keyboard and started recording one track on another. Some time later I refined it and re-recorded it.
That recording became what I viewed as a nice musical interlude to what would surely be an epic album someday. I called it "A Dark Prelude." I transferred it to the computer and some weeks afterwards I was messing around with reversing tracks to see how they would sound. Reversing this track, though brought to my ears something incredibly beautiful. It had an element of ambient sound to it, and yet there were unmistakable and brilliant lines of melody woven within it. I made a few alterations to the track and called it "A Healing Epilogue." Surely one day it would be the perfect closing to an epic album.

The melody continued to haunt me, and so I began to give it words. This was probably one year later. At least one person has told me that they like this song because of the words, so that must mean it was worth it. The idea behind the song is quite simple, and entirely true.
During this time I was putting to myself the age-old question: Why would Jesus weep for Lazarus? Didn't He know that He could bring him back to life? The first several lines of this song were written in the mindset of a conclusion that I had come to, and something that makes sense to me.
When we read of death in the Psalms, it's generally understood that we should think of a spiritual death as well as a physical one. It's understood that Jesus saves us from death, a death that is inextricably linked to the physical death that even atheists cannot deny. There is nothing more natural in the world than for us to mourn the passing of our loved ones. Perhaps this part of our DNA is in itself a kind of a prophecy. Perhaps this is given to us to help us understand the way God views a spiritual death.
And perhaps that is why Jesus wept. Because He witnessed firsthand the separation of the physically living from the physically dead, and understood the significance in it that pertains to the separation between the spiritually living and the spiritually dead.
Then, of course, I think any of us who call ourselves Christians here on earth would be lying if we did not admit that at one time we threw stones at the fallen adulteresses we've seen in the world, even while Jesus was reminding us in our hearts that we ourselves are not without sin. And then, similar to the story of Jonah (although I did not have him in mind while I wrote the song), we have sometimes despised our Groom because of His unending mercy. If this is not true of all Christians, then I will at least confidently say that it has been true of me. But I think that it is true of all Christians, at some point in each individual's life.

I've tried often to help others with my words, to help them understand God, or to help them overcome certain situations. But so often I have been the blind leading the blind. If these people are taken in by my eloquent words, they quickly find me leading them onto a dark road, adding my blindness to their own. I hope that I have done more good than harm, but I have not sufficiently reminded my friends that they ought to read the bible and seek out God on their own, and for their own sake.
Please, God, rescue these souls from me. And although I may doubt it sometimes when I view the past, I know confidently in my heart that He will come back to rescue me as well.

And this is where the song should end. Looking back now it occurs to me that this is the most Psalm-like thing I have ever written. Like so many of David's poems, this song goes through the trials of depression and earnest begging questions, but the end is inevitable.
All that truly matters is that God is good. I hear it in His voice.

Grieving H.

"No one ever told me grief felt so like fear."
The poison, paralyzing me here.
And now am I building card houses just to please my own muses?
What would she say, if she turned this way?

She was the Joy. Oh, God, help me to love You
for taking her home into Your arms.
She was the Joy, but I'm looking for You.
If I scream, let it do me no harm.

Will You go on cutting?
The Surgeon's knife is something to be feared.
Well, I'm afraid. Afraid that You Love me too dear!
You crucified Your Own Son. I know You won't spare me what I need
or what I've learned.
I've learned that You crucified Your Own Son
so You could spare me what I have earned. what I have earned.

She was the Joy. Oh, God, help me to love You
for taking her (taking her) out of my arms.
She was the Joy but I'm looking for You.
If I scream let it do me no harm.
She was the Joy. You gave and You took her away.
She was the Joy that made me come near to You,
and You have surprised me today.





I've only had one or two chances to perform this song, both times with my brother Will, who also has a deep emotional bind to it. These are all ideas adapted from the most passionate and soulful book I've ever read, a very short autobiography of C.S. Lewis that was so personal to him that he wouldn't let it be published under his real name until after he'd passed away. I used to hope that people would be interested in the song enough to take a few seconds out of their day to research it and find out what it was about. It wouldn't have been hard. If they had researched the first line of the song they would find that it is, word for word, the first line of the book. But to the best of my knowledge nobody ever did find it out on their own, so I lost quite a bit of faith in humanity. It destroyed a little bit of my naivety I suppose. It was about losing his wonderful wife to cancer. (No, it's not like A Walk to Remember. For one thing, they were both over fifty when they got married.) If you want to know the details, I highly recommend you read the book. It's very short. I am still naive enough I guess to suppose that my fervent supplication will motivate somebody out there to pick up this incredible journal. You'll also want to read about the situation from some other source, because C.S. Lewis intentionally wrote the book so that readers would not guess that it was from him. That's why he gave his love the ambiguous title, H.
One of the most emotional parts of the book for me is the part I adapted in the second verse, the part about the Surgeon and His knife. Here is the idea. Lewis is questioning whether God might be a Great Sadist instead of a Great Healer. Yes, even C.S. Lewis was struggling so much over the death of his wife that he committed this blasphemous thought. But he was being honest.
Here's the terrifying thought that he comes to. If God was a Sadist, then probably at some point he would grow weary of torturing his creations.
But if God is not a Sadist, if instead He Is the Great Healer, the Great Surgeon, if He Is cutting us open for our own good, then we have no hope of reprieve. If by the surgery He Is saving our souls, then we have no guarantee that the bodily torture will stop anytime soon. Out of this idea comes probably my most favorite quote of all time from C.S. Lewis:
"What do people mean when they say, 'I don't fear God, because I know He Is Good?' Have they never been to a dentist?"

So that's what the second verse is all about. I'm afraid that God Loves me too dearly. It's because He Loves me that He continues to cut me.
Now understand, I am really a wimp. God has not been truly brutal to me in any way. I've actually been incredibly blessed all my life. But nevertheless I relate to everything C.S. Lewis is saying here.

The rest of the song will be easily related to the book if you pick it up and read it (one more time I must highly recommend that you do). It takes less than two hours to read the whole thing from cover to cover.

I will mention one more thing. I did a little play on words. I enjoy plays on words. Probably nobody would catch it if I didn't point it out, which would be ok. But anyways.
"You gave and You took her away."
Of course, this is a rendition of the old adage, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away." This has a very settled meaning. But in the context of the song, the way the grammar works, you could interpret it the old way but you could also interpret it so that the phrase "her away" is connected to the phrase "You gave" as well as "You took." I bet that's confusing. What I'm meaning to say is this. If "her away" is applied to "You gave," then you get a different picture. "You gave her away." You know, like at a wedding. The Father gives His daughter away. If you still don't understand, don't sweat it. It's not even worth spending this paragraph on to explain a little play on words.

My Dear, Will You Return?

When, when, my Dear, will you return? Will you return to me, to me?
When, when, my Dear, will you return?
Come when the hills are gently lit against the sky.
Come when the soldiers kiss their lovers all goodbye.
Come in black, come in white.

Where, where my Dear, will you return? Will you return to me, to me?
Where, where, my Dear, will you return?
Come to the meadow where we walked among the grain.
Come to the window where we watched the moonlight wane.
Come through fog, come through rain.

How could all these heartfelt words fade without a single sigh?
The reason why I inward turn, the hope with which my spirit burns.
Will you return, my Love? Will you return?

Will you return?




I like the vagueness of this song.

I could write a story around it. I could describe in detail what exactly the situation is that made these feelings well up inside some fake character's chest. I could write a Dickensian novel and describe the small town he grew up in, the moment when he saw his Love for the first time, the unlikely circumstances that brought them together and then the unlikelier circumstances that ripped them apart so suddenly that all those words simply faded without even a sigh. Ok, I probably couldn't. Or if I did, it wouldn't be worth scratch. But I'd probably like to leave the situation open-ended even if I could fill in every detail of the history surrounding this moment.
I think some things are better this way. It's kind of nice just to sit back and speculate what this guy might have been going through when he wrote this song. One question haunts me more than any other. Could it be that the girl is dead?
Normally I despise repetitive lyrics, but this one seems okay to me, maybe because the music is so unique. Then there are enough details to build up the illusion of a complete story: walks through fields of grain and watching the moon from the windowsill. I've never before written a song that was so little substance, so much pure feeling.

But, as I've probably written before, I don't truly feel that I've written this tune. More like it was buried somewhere and I dug it up and dusted it off. But that digging was some hard work. I'm not meaning to say that I didn't have to work hard at the song, but the ultimate result is hardly something I can think of taking back down and changing it around again. Some chump said that art is never finished, only abandoned. That's a crock.

I invite you to invent your own story around this little ditty. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to make my own concrete.

video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSKqYWP1vdM

By the Morning

I shall wait here, wait 'til daybreak, 'til the sun lights up the windowsill.
The fog lies thick and opaque on the houses, and on the hills,
and still my heart is longing for some change to come on the landscape.

To show me that the night would finally end,
and that you'd be here by the morning.

I can hear the train, it rumbles far away, but still I know
it carries on, taking its people to places where they long to go.
It swells my heart to think that I'm moving so slow
from night to night with nowhere else to go

but you show me that the night would finally end...

and that you'll be here by the morning.






I wrote this song probably about 6 months ago. It's always been one of my favorites because of its succinctness.
That's the hardest thing for me in music, is to portray an idea with enough vagueness so that the listener can fill in the cracks. So many songs I've written have been five or six minutes long because I felt a need at the time to make crystal clear what I was communicating, then more often than not I ended up with a throw-away song. But this song is very short, and very small in scope. It's a simple song about hope and anticipation.
It's got a train in it, which I like.

It swells my heart to think that I'm moving so slow, from night to night with nowhere else to go.
It's true, I am behind. I've never had a chance to make any real quality recordings of the songs I love. I have written a plethora of songs but I've always seemed to lack the chance to share them with someone. I do love these songs, but something like that doesn't really reach its potential until you can share it with someone else and see that it touches them. I'd like my music to touch someone someday. It has happened in fleeting moments in the past, but seldom. More often I've been told that my music makes for a great sedative.

To This Land

I have to say, this is one of my favorites. This song is probably at least four years old, it's one of two acoustic guitar songs I wrote with the same four chords.
I may have said this before, but when it comes to a lot of these songs I truly don't feel like a "composer." I feel more like a miner. It's more like you just start fiddling around with notes until something predetermined and buried is uncovered. Now that I've studied music quite a bit I fashion it more into what I planned for it to be, but the material there is not something I can build. But this early song was definitely one of only a few that I immediately recognized as a little vein of gold.

I went through a lot of strife, I remember, in trying to name this song because I didn't want people to get presuppose that it's patriotic. It's not. In fact, when I wrote this song I was still relatively unsullied with the study of politics.
It's about waking up for the second time. I went through a very dark phase of life in middle and high school that made me numb and disillusioned, but then coming out of high school I started to notice things again. I started taking walks in the park and seeing the glint of the ripples in the gray Columbia River. I noticed the pavement, how it was broken out of place by tree roots, and it reminded me of being very small. I must have walked here once before. I remembered for the first time that I used to be the youngest part of a young family. The rows of carefully planted trees on the crest of the hill across the river, the bright leaves storming down like colored snow in late fall, the fragrance of the grapes of distant vineyards in the summer. All those things surrounded me when I was a child but I never recognized them. Then I went away for a long time, but now I was back home.
That's what this song is about.




I recall younger days when life was more than just work and play,
when all that we could not explain was something we could celebrate.
And I recall joyful tears, smiles spread from ears to ears,
before everything was measured, before we counted out our years,
and before boredom explained away all our fears.

Come into my heart, Dear. Complicated my life.
Something deep inside me here is screaming it's not right. It's not right.

I'm convinced that our lives were not meant to simply ignore one-another until we've been spent.
To be worn, as with erosion. And I will not be disillusioned,
for I feel the Love You've sent me.

So come into my heart, Dear. Complicate my life.
Something deep inside me here is screaming it's not right.

And all I need is something I can't understand.
And all I need is something I can't comprehend.
And all I need is something not concrete to hold within my hand,
within my hand.

And so You brought me to this land.




When I wrote the song I was still young and naive enough to honestly desire some girl to come into my life and complicate everything around me, and maybe I haven't quite overcome that weakness.
I know it's kind of a counter-intuitive idea, because typically we think in terms of how complicated this adult life is compared to what we call the simple life, being a kid in the backyard dirt. But that's not what I feel. Invoking these childhood feelings complicates my worldview with a desire for adventure, looking at life with newness, enjoying the mysteries of life without always feeling a need to explain them away.
It's also kind of strange still to use the word Dear, when there's really no girl that I can apply this kind of inspiration to. Somehow I was envisioning a girl when I wrote the song, but it was really was always very clear who the song really was about.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joel-Crow/105195016743?id=105195016743&sk=app_2405167945

Legalized Infanticide

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joel-Crow/105195016743?id=105195016743&sk=app_2405167945


A stranger comes to my bedside, stands over me while I sleep,
comes into my room from the outside, from the darkest shadow creeps.
Who would have thought that he'd come here, into the sanctity of my home?
I never even knew the fear. Never knew I wasn't alone.
Darkness veils this barren land devoid of all hope and love
as he stretches out a bloodstained hand concealed behind a heavy black glove.

And it's murder! As he reaches for my throat,
then runs off with footsteps soft, concealed behind an ominous black coat.

(Act II)
The woman comes to a surgeon hoping for some peace of mind,
and yet shrinking away from the bludgeon that she has come to find.
The surgeon's in it for money to assassinate a defenseless foe
with a weapon of expert cunning. And through this, the apathy grows.
Darkness veils this fertile land devoid of all hope and love
as he stretches out a bloodstained hand concealed behind a white glove.

And it's murder in new words! As he reaches for the womb,
the words come from his own mother:
"I'd love to bring you into this world, but there just isn't enough room."

Is this genocide? Is it all a lie to take away his life?
But we turn a blind eye to the homicide, we're accomplices to this crime.
Oh, it's such a shame. He never even had a name,
never knew the joy of this life, never opened up his little eyes.

Darkness veils this barren land devoid of all hope and love,
and he stretches out a bloodstained hand concealed behind a lawful white glove.

And it's murder in new words as he reaches for the womb.
The words come from his own mother:
"I'd love to bring you into this world, but there just isn't enough room"

Is this genocide? Is it all a lie to take away his life?
But we turn a blind eye to this homicide, accomplices to this crime.
Oh, it's such a shame. He never even had a name,
never knew the joy of this life, never opened up his eyes.
We all cry for the mother and the pain that she must feel within...

...but no one cries for him.




This is an older song I wrote, probably about three years ago, I remember it was one of the first songs I ever wrote in a minor key and during a time when I hardly yet comprehended what that phrase meant.

We should all be viewing this issue with close and critical scrutiny especially in light of the Kermit Gosnell case, where not only what I call infanticide was perpetrated, but also what every right-thinking person calls infanticide. I hope we can all agree that once the baby is living outside of the womb it is a baby.

I know that abortion is thought of as a women's rights issue, but I don't care about that when life is at stake. The first and most fundamental right is the right to live. How can we have come here? Does the pain a person has suffered really justify them for hurting, let alone killing, another person? When it comes to abortion I only ask one question. Is it murder or is it not murder? You cannot have it both ways. If it is murder then it is always murder. If it is not murder then it is never murder. People who want to call it two different ways in two different circumstances make me crazy with grief. That we should kill someone for having an evil father, or even just because he or she is an inconvenience to us. Oh, God, help us.

The first verse of this song is a kind of a symbolic parable. Each one of us young adults could well have been aborted at the whim of our mothers, and that is a sobering thought. And when we stand by and let it happen, we are no better than accomplices. We may as well lay our coats at the feet of Saul the Pharisee.

I use the word genocide in this song as a play on the word. Of course, abortion, at least today, has nothing to do with what we call genocide, but I used it to convey the idea that a person is killing his or her own genes.

How do we know what we've destroyed when we end a life before it's even begun? We've all been charmed by children who are seeing things for the first time and excited and happy to live in such a large and vibrant world. What have we done by denying the joy of this life to our unloved children?


Ben Folds wrote a song years ago called "Brick" and it wasn't supposed to say anything moralistic, it was only meant to incite pity and express the emotional pain he and his girlfriend went through when they aborted their child. It is musically a good song, but there is nothing more contemptible to me than someone who after having committed a murder wants you to refrain from calling them out on it but at the same time wants you to feel pity for their guilt-feelings.

... but no one cries for him.

Only Waiting

This is another song that is several years old, and though for a time it was one of my favorites it hardly ever saw light of day. I believe I played it live only once in a small coffee shop where only a few people came to watch. But in those days every show was a great opportunity. I recorded it and shelved it and forgot all about it until recently I had to dig through storage to salvage whatever was still worthy of time and effort.
This song was definitely in a sense the Don Quixote in my heart coming out. I'd spent my life in books (still do, perhaps more than I ought to) and finally finding myself more independent (so this must have been shortly after I'd graduated from high school) I discovered that I was standing in a wide world where I'd never even bothered to look past the walls of the buildings where I slept and learned and ate. In my small way I began to fantasize about how wonderful it would be to pick up and move away, to truly live. At this period my best option was just walking down to the park and marveling at the Columbia River, but like Don Quixote making giants out of windmills I carved my own story-line out of the wild desert landscape.
But every Don Quixote must have his Sancho Panza. What really turns a good adventure bright is a faithful companion. No doubt in the writing of this song I envisioned someone entirely unlike Sancho, most likely a girl of course. But never mind. The point is that while an adventure of one's own is thrilling, to be able to share something like that with someone special seems to really be what life is made of.




There's magic in these moments so keep your eyes wide open.
You will never have a second chance to be a witness to this second.
This town where I was born and raised fades into lights among the hills and the highways,
the rills and the byways.

So won't you take this chance? Won't you take the fall?
Won't you give up everything you've always been terrified to death of losing?
Because our bags are packed, our tickets paid, and everything has been arranged.
Now I am only waiting for you to say, "Take me away."

There's mystery all around us.
I think that God has found us.*
If I thought it was our victory that would invalidate the mystery.
No, I was searching in the darkest depths for something I was trying to get
but something took a hold of me in a flash of brilliant lightning.

Someone's in the rain...

Won't you take the chance won't you give up everything?
You've been terrified.
Our bags are packed tickets paid and everything has been arranged.
Now I am only waiting for you to say "Take me away."


*I should point out that this is a statement that I've heard a lot of different people say something similar too. I believe we have all stolen it from C.S. Lewis, at least I know I did. The point is that we often think that it's entirely up to us to find God out by looking in the right places. Hogwash. C.S. Lewis has said that perhaps what matters is not that we find God but that God find us.


Hear this song & others: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joel-Crow/105195016743?id=105195016743&sk=app_2405167945

Carry Me Away

"Are God's consolations not enough for you, words spoken gently to you? Why has your heart carried you away and why do your eyes flash so that you vent your rage against God and pour out such words from your  mouth?" -Eliphaz

The strength is on me, but I've fallen too far.  My wits have never been sharper and yet all these clear and concise lines of human wisdom swim around in my head, each distorting the other. I can see nothing to be fully true or false. This would all be so much simpler if I could just convince myself to be an agnostic.
Meanwhile I've pulled everything in this world apart to see how it all works, even my own befuddled mind. This insatiable search for the exhaustive answer leaves the world cold and dark. Even the clouds are giving away to these bright evening stars. They shine like gods, and they are far away like any god must be. It's not to be wondered at that so many different nations have taken to worshiping them at different points of history. But do they hear my song? Do you hear my desperate song? They don't reply, gods never do.
So why am I still praying to them? I've prayed to pagan gods and searched the stars for signs but none of it is fulfilling, and none of it has made a difference. There was a time when I thought that the right philosophy would solve every puzzle. Then there was a time when I was convinced that scientific exploration would answer every question. Yes, I've been at it late into the night to find something satisfying. I've studied life and death and planted seeds in time.
Still everything feels wrong. Do you hear my desperate song?

Carry me away on your blind faith before I get carried away with my studies. Or is it too late?
Even these overlapping patterns have turned chaotic. Everything is circulating.
Now is it all just useless love and hating? Is life a sham? Is purpose a ghost? Is it in all triviality that we learn to despise Adolf Hitler and champion Abraham Lincoln?
Carry me away with your illogical love before I get carried away by my despair.
I've found so many facts and so many perspectives, but nothing here can stop the aching.
I don't even know if I exist.
But if this heart is true, then it must be breaking.

Mythology, scientific understanding; neither seems objectively better than the other. Can all this chemistry explain away the fight we all face? Does Darwinism give an explanation for self-examination? Or is mythology the only hope for light? Must we die on our blind beliefs about what gave us life and knowledge? I've seen Prometheus make fools of scientists. But in the end he's no good. He does his dance with the animals beneath him and then disappears into the smoke of soberness. And our self-righteous descendants will be left to wonder how we could have been so foolish to believe such nonsense.

Do you hear my song? Does anyone hear my song? If a man prays and God does not exist to hear it, does his soul make a sound?

I don't even know if I exist. But one thing I do know.
If this heart is true, then it must be breaking.

Take Your Time

Spare me just one moment, won't you sing me a song?
I just need to hear your voice. I haven't heard you sing in so very long.

Stay, just a chorus? Or a verse, if you're there.

Maybe something I'd recognize or a long-forgotten air.

You said you just didn't have the time.

So here, take some of mine.

Because this could be the last chance to say it right,

so hold on tight and take your time. Take your time.

Sun rises like yeast on the hillside, slanting rays through the trees

and the song it awakens on my lips brings back such memories.

We were both so young, catching moths in the grass.

We've been through some hard times but the memories, they're finally coming back.

You said you just didn't have the time.

So here, take some of mine.

Because this could be the last chance to say it right,

so hold on tight and take your time.

This could be the last chance to say goodnight,

so hold on tight and take your time. Take your time.

This is a song I wrote a few years ago, and time has endeared this song to me rather than having desensitized me to it. There is nothing extremely special in the message. It says what it means essentially. This is a good companion song to "The Simple Things" because it has such a similar message, studded with some memories from my childhood: the slanting rays of sunlight through pine trees and catching moths in the grass on a warm summer night. It's always with reluctance that I look back to those times because I am afraid my memory is poor and I looking back I really can't see a child who was anything like what I have become. But these few images steal in, and it conjures up a momentary feeling in me that is not so nostalgic as much as it is curious. That probably doesn't make any sense.

I do remember once before I wrote this song, I used to drive myself and my brother to high school and it was on his large gray binder that I saw a phrase carved with a black pen. "Take My Time." I imagine it served as a reminder for him to not act hastily with anything, but I believe it was from this that I worked out the phrase, "You said you just didn't have the time. So here, take some of mine." Many of the songs I write begin that way, with a general idea, then a single clever line. There you've got the subject of the picture and all you need is to fill in a landscape behind it.

Loneliness is a Blessing

This is a song I wrote in high school. It's a story that I've never personally experienced, but that I have witnessed, and it would be hard to live in the modern world without witnessing it. This song is a story about casual and dishonest love, but it breaks in on the mind of the protagonist at a moment of brutal honesty.

Loneliness is such a blessing. To get lost in a crowd, to put down your stifling mask, it is freeing but it is cold. In all my past life I've only been afraid of being alone, and outwardly in shallow conversations I will still conform to that idea because it's something that people understand. But I can feel my heart digressing from what I'm screaming out loud. They could not understand, how could they? I don't even really understand it, that this great evil, Loneliness, could somehow be a blessing.
But at least the tension of a dying passion is ended. At least there is some kind of rest from exhaustion in loneliness. At least this agony is something that I can relate to. This is pain, but a familiar pain. I've come home, even if home is a prison cell.

Your welcoming arms! Were they just a dream? That's how they seem to me.
At the start there was at least some illusion of joy and hope. But she knew that I never really believed it. And she didn't mind.

So I resigned my hopes and fears, as she had done long ago, and I gave what was left of my heart to her, though she was just a mere friend. There was never any nonsense, no confusion. She took it only on the strict mutual understanding that I'd never get lost in love again. She took it on the condition that the heart must never beat.
From there the story is old. As friends we slowly grew apart, and we never did grow to love each other, we never were foolish enough to believe that we were lovers at heart. Our contract was lined out very clearly in her demands, she wanted nothing but the chemistry. Chemistry, what a cold resolve! But everything else was foolishness. There was no soul, there was only chemistry.
And hard times came upon me.
But when I asked her to take my hand, she looked at me coldly. She saw my heart begin to beat and bleed, and she gave me to understand that that broken heart was mine and mine alone. The contract was broken. The broken heart always had been mine and mine alone.

Loneliness is such a blessing. How could it be? How could I be relieved to be here on the outside on my own?
But loneliness is such a blessing.



A short (or maybe not) afterword. This song was for me mainly a song of bitterness. I looked around on people my own age in shallow and very temporary relationships, making the most of what they called life, but I was always an outcast. From the cold on the outside I consoled myself with the vengeful thought that I would be better off than them in the long run because loneliness ultimately was a blessing. Like the man in my song, they too would eventually find themselves in the cold without a friend because they'd never taken the time to love with anything apart from chemistry. It was wrong of me to look down on them as I did, but I don't know how else I could have survived. I retained the will to go on partly because I knew that their love, which I even felt a yearning to be part of, was fake, but my loneliness was real.
But as is often the case, I had hardly worked all this out in my mind, or any of it really for that matter, in the moment of writing the song. And I still treasure this song, despite the bitter spirit that I wrote it in, because it does still carry truth. Today the song inspires both bitterness and compassion in me for those who live a life with a mere chemistry-based love.
But the best part is that the story is not over. Several months later another song was to come.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joel-Crow/105195016743?id=105195016743&sk=app_2405167945

This Town is a Desert

I was born and raised in this desert. I certainly was not an especially unhappy child, but I don't believe I ever lay back and looked at the clouds rolling by. I don't believe I ever looked at a tree and saw anything but a tree. I was never given to any great deal of daydreaming. I don't believe I was a particularly innocent child, if I understand innocence correctly today. When I started to grow out of childhood I looked around and was disillusioned with the life I'd be content with, I saw the desert not just for what it was, but for what it implied. Day followed upon day that I stumbled through this desert of a town on my routine life, always walking on autopilot towards vague destinations. The landscape was harsh and cruel, a wasteland, daubed like paint, but instead with meaningless stone mounds. I looked around at the other children who were growing up, and I despised them. Each one was diagnosed with some supposedly earth-shattering disease (or "condition," as it was euphemistically called) and was never under any circumstances to be allowed to forget it. Those who were not officially diagnosed had diagnosed themselves. I had diagnosed myself with depression, but we were unable to write prescriptions for ourselves. It's a pity, maybe some day. Meanwhile some kids got their "medicine" through less legitimate means. Each child was too full of drugs to follow a train of thought, or even to climb a bookshelf, let alone profit by it. And each physician looked gallantly on with their nobly-made profit, with an implied immunity to "conditions," but in reality too sick to heal thyself, as the proverb goes.
I grew older, and the children around me grew older. They had been prevailed upon to pick up and read their books, but they skipped over every word. Cliff notes were very much in vogue. We were taught to comprehend, but we were never encouraged to dig. We went to lecture halls, and when I walked out and looked around, I saw that no sooner had my peers emerged back into the desert than they had forgotten what it was they had heard. I spent my days avoiding eye-contact. I grew foreign to physical affection. I ran away in my thoughts from their awkwardly staring, uncouth eyes. But when the morning came, I looked into the mirror, and I saw the truth.

And only now am I faced with what I've done. The lies, the contented shallowness. What have I become? I was led blindly down this road; I'd never begun it, I swear. But now there's nowhere else to run. Oh, God, what have I become? I could try to lose myself in my books, or in music, but the reflection follows me through every medium, those cold blank eyes still staring back at me. This desert is a town I can't run from.

No matter what the season, the flower is always falling and the grass withering away. The dark of night and the afternoon clouds mesh together and fade into a constant gray. The teachers tell us to put our hearts on display. My worthless heart is always up there somewhere, a perfect specimen, as it if means something, but can't they see that it's crumbling like clay? I'm at the end of my rope. As a last resort I'm running down all avenues of faith, searching and begging for a chance to escape that does not end in death.
And every morning now I'm faced with what I've done. What have I become?

What have I become?

Cold, blank eyes still staring back at me. What have I become?

This Desert is a Town I can't run from.

Day by day I am slowly falling into a permanent sleep...





I feel a touch on my shoulder and look around, confusedly. It's a girl. A pretty girl. A pretty girl who I'd assumed had always looked through me like everybody else. I avoid eye-contact from force of habit. I avoid physical contact from force of habit. But she is there, and she is speaking. Can I believe that she is speaking to me? Since the first touch of her skin I've opened my eyes and the sun has been warm and vibrant instead of harsh and blinding. Suddenly life is strangely bright. When I glance awkwardly into her eyes I don't see the blank, staring, uncouth eyes I remember from the desert, or from the mirror. Those large blue eyes have a simple and curious look.
When she's gone some distance off I find the courage to finally level my own cold eyes at her. She's looking up at something. There's a boy with her, and he's pretending to look up. But now I look around for the very first time since I'd begun to fall asleep. There are other people whose eyes had been cold and blank and uncouth like mine, but now they are also looking up. Their eyes are transformed as if they were renewed by the process. It's as if they were all of them flying kites. But their brows are wrinkled and their eyes are strained. They must be searching. Searching for what?
Through the clouds, above the skies, and the sun finally comes out in full blast and they squint their eyes, but don't turn away.
My dear, where have I been all this time? My dear, my hands are trembling, legs are weak, my knees are bending! Before I can even process the thought I see it, I know that this town, it came from me. The hot desert wind, all the while it was only my own labored breathing! And you saved me from my wretched sleep with your liquid eyes and your careless touch!

And as for this desert town, I was wrong to search for an escape that does not end in death. I must let this desert inside of me die. Let it die, Lord, so that I may come to life.